The present techniques relate generally to the evaluation and assessment of cellular cultures, tissues and organisms which may be used to assess pharmacological effects. In particular, the present techniques relate to the use of visual motion analysis in the evaluation and assessment of cellular motion.
The focus of the pharmaceutical industry is typically to develop new and medically useful drugs that are effective at treating a disease or disorder of a patient. In addition, it is generally desirable that such new and useful drugs have few or no adverse side effects. However, as should be apparent, the number of compounds that might be useful as drugs far exceeds the number that will ultimately be developed. As a result, the pharmaceutical industry screens vast numbers of drug candidates in an attempt to select those few that warrant additional testing and development.
One such screening technique utilizes simple living system based assessment, e.g. cell assays, to determine the effect of a compound on one or more characteristics of a cell culture. Such cell assays are relatively inexpensive compared to in-vivo animal studies and therefore provide a cost effective way to perform large-scale screening of compounds. In particular, a typical cell assay may involve applying a compound of interest to a cell culture and subsequently evaluating one or more characteristics of the cells forming the culture. Based upon the evaluation of the characteristics, the effect of the compound may be evaluated.
In some instances, however, it may be difficult to assess the effect of the compound on the characteristic of interest. For example, in some instances, the characteristic of interest may not be attributable to a single cell but may instead be a characteristic of a group of cells. One example of such a characteristic is the coordinated motion of cells, such as cardiac cells, that may correspond to the rhythmic or periodic motion of a corresponding organ, such as the beating of a heart.
Currently, however, there is no way to effectively assess such coordinated motion in a quick, objective, and reproducible manner. For example, one current technique for assessing treatment effects on coordinated cellular motion involves having an observer watch a video of the cell culture after treatment with a compound and make an assessment of the effect of the compound on the coordinated motion of the cells. Such observer based analysis, however, is subjective, slow, and generally not reproducible.
Alternatively, aggregate area measurements of one or more electrical properties of the cells of the culture may be made and, based upon changes in the one or more electrical properties, an assessment of the effect of the compound on the motion of the cells may be made. Such electrophysiological assays, however, may be problematic due to the technical difficulty involved in performing the assay as well as to relatively low throughput which may be unsuitable for mass screenings. Further, there may be a poor correlation between the aggregate electrical measurements and the cellular motion. In addition, to the extent that the characteristic of interest is coordinated motion, not simply cellular motion in general, such aggregate electrical measurements may not be useful in assessing the coordinated nature of the cellular motion.
It is, therefore, desirable to be able to more effectively assess certain cellular characteristics, such as characteristics associated with cellular motion, when determining the effect of a compound on the cells.